


Sorcery

by Punkpoemprose



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: 17th Century, Alternate Universe, F/M, Name Changes, Period Typical Attitudes, Salem Witch Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2019-09-06 11:13:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16831501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punkpoemprose/pseuds/Punkpoemprose
Summary: Set in 1692- Salem Massachusetts, the height of the Salem Witch Trials.Part of the Kristanna Past Lives Collaboration.





	Sorcery

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thank you all so much for reading this. I’ve had a bit less than a week to write, and I didn’t quite get around to exploring all I wanted to. I’d like to thank teneniel-of-dathomir for organizing this whole event and for letting me take part as well as princekristoffs for reblogging the post looking for someone to write this. I had a lot of fun with it. I hope you all do too!

Christopher had known the Jacobs sisters for as long as he could remember. They were reclusive, mostly kept to themselves, especially after their parents passed. He tried to keep an eye on them, brought water up from their well sometimes, tilled the soil when it needed doing, nothing huge, just a kindness between loners.

It was what was right. Being a good neighbor was a virtue and virtue was the guiding principle of Salem Massachusetts where they had built their homes. Not that piety counted for much lately. It was difficult to believe that your kindness was appreciated by the lord when young women were convulsing on the church floor and god fearing neighbors were hanging from the gallows by their necks.

The day that Ester, the elder of the two sisters, was accused of witchcraft was the first-time Christopher had allowed his eyes to be opened to the chaos around him. It didn’t make any sense to him that the gracious and kind women next door to him could be evil. Perhaps the younger of the two was a bit more outspoken than strictly considered pious, but she wasn’t the one facing trial.

Of course, one could not deny that Ester was unnatural to look at. Her skin was pale as fresh fallen snow, and the only color one could find in her was the piercing blue eyes above her high cheekbones that seemed to stare directly into a person’s soul. She had white blonde hair and a knack for saying as little as physically possible. Some, who didn’t know better, thought that she never spoke at all, but Christopher had heard her whisper a kind word to him once, from her sick bed, as he hung a particularly heavy cooking kettle in their fireplace.

It was a shock to him that she wouldn’t lay there again. Just a few months before, the whole town had been praying for her to get through yet another one of her bouts of fever. They had all called her “the angel of Salem” for her ethereal beauty and ability to come back from illness after illness without fail. Yesterday they had put her in the stockades to await trial for witchcraft all because a girl had pointed her finger towards her. It felt wrong to Christopher, and the thought of what was to come shook him to the very core of his being, but he couldn’t do much else than shiver at the thought.

He couldn’t pretend that he was any better than her accusers. Despite not wanting to, he stood before her, immobile, wondering why he of all people was asked to guard a suspected witch.

It was dark out, but the moon was bright and teased all those looking on with the thought of a fire’s illumination and warmth in the bitter cold. He drew his cloak closer to him and tried to remove the darkness from of his mind but could not. The young woman shivering behind him in the stockades of the town’s center would be convicted in a court of man. He knew already that they were strongly against her for the fear of difference. If she plead guilty, she might have a chance to repent and serve the community, but if she did not she would surely be hung.

In a town, full of people being hanged for impropriety, Christopher couldn’t help but wonder whether he deserved death far more than Ester. She was simply odd. Her illness and her quietness made her different from the people of Salem. Within the course of a day she had gone from pitied to pariah. He was sure that his sin far out measured hers, even if she were a witch.

She hadn’t spoken, and he hadn’t looked upon her in hours. There was just something about looking at her that made him feel physically ill. He knew it wasn’t witchcraft, but rather that it was guilt. But looking away wasn’t helping. He could hear her teeth chatter and each clinking of teeth put him more and more on edge.

Pulling his cloak tighter to him for a moment, savoring its warmth and knowing what he had to do, he wondered about Ester’s younger sister Anne. Anne was a strong willed young woman with a temper to match her fiery red hair. Of course, she generally stayed quiet in the community, but he had seen her many a day tending to her garden in improper dress. He heard her argue with her sister from time to time, always over foolish things, but loudly enough to be inappropriate. Sometimes she even went so far as to fall asleep in church and insist aloud to her sister and anyone else who would listen that it wasn’t her fault that church took place at a time she’d rather spend sleeping.

Perhaps the biggest shock of all was that the less blasphemous sister was the one being put on the stand for evil. He didn’t want to think on the possibility that the red head might be next.

With a sigh, he tugged at the strings of the cloak with his free hand, and held his musket with the other. He thought about setting it down, he felt silly having it anyway, but held on regardless. He knew he had little to fear from Ester, but there were wolves abound in the forests surrounding Salem and despite their active dislike of entering the township, he felt he could never be too careful.

As the cold seeped into his bones, he turned to face Ester. Her eyes were closed, but he knew it was impossible that she was asleep. No one in their right mind could sleep in the contorted position the stocks placed them in. He hoped that closing her eyes was giving her some peace regardless and draped his own cloak around her shaking form. For what it was worth, he hoped it lessened her discomfort.

He turned from her again and stood some paces away, staring at the dirt below his feet.

“Why?” her voice was soft but clear in the quiet of the night.

He almost jumped at the sound, but simply shivered instead. He did not turn to face her.

“You were cold, weren’t you?”

She didn’t respond, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He hadn’t expected her to speak at all, so he supposed he shouldn’t have expected her to be thankful.

“Why are you here?” she called to him again. This time he was less shaken by her suddenness of speech and turned to meet her eye.

Her pallor was only made more so by the light of the moon and the chill of the air tinting her skin blue with its icy bite.

“You know why,” he responded simply holding his firearm aloft for a moment, but purposefully keeping it trained away from her.

She blinked and her face changed from an expressionless state to a slight smirk. “I mean in Salem.”

He took a moment, just staring at her. It was an odd question to ask, and he didn’t have an answer, not a good one anyway. It was almost rhetorical in nature. She knew there was nothing tying him to the town. He was a working man with no family, not particularly attached to anyone or anything besides his horse Sven and the home he had inherited from his grandfather.

“Where else would I go?” he asked, because what else could he say.

“Anywhere but here.”

Her answer was quick, and she gave no further explanation. She didn’t have to. She didn’t need any higher power to feel his discontent. She had seen it in his eyes every time he stopped by her small home to help her sister with some chore or another. It was obvious to her that he cared for Anne, the very unpuritanical way in which he gazed upon her when she gardened with her skirts hiked up around her legs. Ester was quiet, not unintelligent. She saw things that she never spoke on.

Christopher saw a spark in her eyes, one of recognition, and he knew that the woman he guarded was a kindred spirit to that within himself which he never knew. He did want to leave the town. He wanted to be free of the opinions of others and the constant fear that his want for freedom would be discovered.

His attention was pulled away from her when he heard a rustling along the edge of where the square met the woods. It was far off, but he knew that he had heard a twig snap, no breeze could do that. When he looked towards it, he saw a light, faint, but glowing in the foliage. Reflexively he raised his weapon towards it.

“What, did you invite the devil to free you from the stockade?”

“Oh yes, he gets rather upset when I don’t show up for our midnight dance buck naked in the forest,” she responded sardonically. “More likely one of the young ladies of the town trying to catch a glimpse at the witch and see if she can make me tell her the name of her future husband.”

Something in her mocking made Christopher relax. There was no possible way in which she could be a witch, some biblical demon would have eaten her for her insolence. He wondered if her silence had just been a cover for years of scathing remarks collected in her mind.

“Come out!” he shouted towards the foliage at least contented that a wolf could not use a lantern and that the only supernatural entity abound was the spirit of wit, which was at least not a physical challenge to him.

The light was extinguished after a moment, but eventually he did see a dark shape emerge and approach him from the forest’s edge. He no longer directly pointed his weapon, but he kept his finger on the trigger.

“Who are you, what is your business here?” he called.

There was no response, and the figure drew nearer still, until it was exposed by moonlight.

“Anne!” Ester shouted, voice full of disapproval. “I told you to leave town!”

Indeed, the skulking dark figure had turned out to be the younger of the Jacobs sisters, and Christopher couldn’t help but be shocked by her appearance. She was dressed as a man, hair carefully tied back and hidden under a cap. By far the most shocking thing about her was the axe she held in her right hand, which she held up in protest toward her sister.

“I told you I wouldn’t leave you behind,” she said annoyed, glaring at her elder sister, seemingly ignoring Christopher completely.

“And I told you that I didn’t care, that you were leaving town anyway. I even paid that woodsman to let you lodge at his home until he and his wife could find you a way to Boston.”

Anne shook her head, “And what was I going to do then? An unmarried woman out in the world alone, I don’t have the figure to be a whore.”

“No, but I showed you how to bind your chest, you would have made a fine stable boy. You love horses Anne, just go.”

“I’m not leaving you, and that’s final. We go together or not at all.”

Christopher had to shout over them to quiet their squabbling. It was a miracle that they hadn’t woken up half the town in the middle of the witching hour.

“Hey! Both of you quiet!” he shouted looking back and forth to the women as they quieted.

“Good,” he said as they both stared at him, “First you’re not supposed to be here, and second, what were you planning on using that axe for?”

Anne looked at Christopher with moderate annoyance and dropped the hunk of wood and metal to the ground at her feet. “I was going to chop her out of that thing before dawn, but you just had to see my lantern, didn’t you?”

She was full of fire and brimstone, and again Christopher couldn’t help but wonder if they had the wrong sister in the stocks. One thing was for sure, these sisters had more capacity to care for each other than they had self-preservation.

“Why are you making it sound like I’ve done something wrong?” Christopher couldn’t help but ask.

“Because if you don’t step aside, you will be,” the red head responded, reaching down again for her axe.

“Anne, really just go back home and get your things. The woodsman will be by in an hour,” Ester pleaded, sounding both annoyed and exasperated with her sister as if she were embarrassed by her actions.

“Not without you. Ester, what’s he going to do, shoot me?”

Christopher halfheartedly lifted his weapon, but couldn’t bring himself to point it at her. He could do a great many things, but he wasn’t sure that shooting this woman was one of them. He stepped out of her path.

“See?” Anne called to her sister as she approached the stockade with the axe and with a labored swing struck at the lock keeping it together.

“See what?” Ester responded, “You nearly take off my head?”

“Well I’m sorry I’m not particularly good with an axe, seems I’d make a pretty poor stable boy.”

Christopher couldn’t believe what he was doing as he stood by and let the younger sister hack at the lock. He may have never wanted to guard Ester in the first place, but with the way Salem had been treating “justice” as of late, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out what would happen to him if he let her escape.

He stepped forward and pulled the axe from Anne’s hands easily and pushed her away from the stockade.

“What are you doing?” she protested hotly, but her words stopped as he swung the axe and the lock fell into the dirt below their feet.

For a moment, she merely stared at him, but then stepped forward again to flip the wooden slab up high enough for her sister’s head to fit through. It was not a particularly easy task given that the other side was still held in place by a lock, but within a minute, Ester was free.

She embraced her sister who was busy rubbing at her wrists and her neck, which undoubtedly were sore from immobility. Then she turned to face him and with a smile, let her sister go to embrace him as well.

She whispered into his ear, “You could come if you like. I’ve seen you watch me in the garden you know, not sure a man who looks at a woman like that belongs in a place like this. You could bring us to Boston.”

He went red before muttering under his breath, “I don’t take people places.”

She released him, frowning slightly before walking to her sister and tugging on her hand to bring her into the direction of the woods closest to them.

“Come on Ester, Olaf is right over here. We’ll get everything we can from the house and head towards another settlement.”

Ester stopped and looked back at Christopher, “Follow us,” she said simply, and Christopher did.

The Jacobs sisters didn’t need witchcraft to be bewitching.


End file.
